Mediawiki

Hints and Tips

Purge wiki page cache

When changing templates, purge the browser & mediawiki cache. To purge the cache of a single page, add &action=purge to the URL (see [1] for more)

Increase default font size

The easiest way is to add the following to wiki common stylesheet (MediaWiki:Common.css):

/***** Increase default text size ****/
#content {font-size: 1.2em}

There are in fact several ways to increase the font size. Using Opera's DragonFly debug environment (Ctrl-Shift-I), it is easy to see how the font size of a normal wiki text is computed (css is filtered for property font-size):

Computed Style
    font-size: 15.36px;

Inherited from div
#bodyContent {
    font-size: 0.8em
}

Inherited from div
#content {
    font-size: 1.2em
}

Inherited from body
body {
    font-size: 1.0em
}

Inherited from html
html {
    font-size: 1.0em
}

Note that em refers to the size of the current font, after application of all inherited styles. In the case above it means that the size of a standard wiki text is not 0.8em as given by div#bodyContent, but well 16px * 1.0 * 1.0 * 1.2 * 0.8 = 15.36px.

One can edit any CSS property above to change the default size of the wiki text. We choose to edit #content so that it only affects the wiki text part (including first header).

Keyboard shortcuts

• Reference page in wikipedia
• Page explaining how to change keyboard shortcut using user custom stylesheet.
• Most frequently-used HTML access keys (default access-key shortcut is alt+shift for Firefox and shift+Esc for Opera):

Action	Key
accesskey-edit	e
accesskey-preview	p
accesskey-save	s
accesskey-search	f

Access Restriction

See these pages for implementing access restriction in MediaWiki:

• A page that implement per-page access restriction [2].
• Another way to hide pages [3].
  • See sourceforge project.
• Yet another extension [4].
• Security problem with access restriction extension:
  • [5]
  • [6]
• Some information on how to create custom namespaces [7].

Miscellaneous

• Page Special:Version produces a complete list of all extensions installed on the wiki.

Troubleshooting

Fix templates that always produce {{{1}}}

Templates in Mediawiki will fail if the parameters contains an equal sign. Consider for instance the template nb:

div class="noborder">
{{{1}}}</div>

Let's enclose a <source> tag:

<source lang=bash>echo Hello</source>}}

echo Hello

The fix is simply to prepend 1= to the parameter value:

1=<source lang=bash>echo Hello</source>}}

echo Hello

Extensions

SyntaxHighlight GeSHi

This extension adds the <source> tag to present formatted source code. See official page.

Restoring old <pre> formatting

Since at least version r24298 (July 21, 2007) (with GeSHi version 1.0.8), <source> tag does not match usual formatting applied for <pre> tags. This is because the extension applies by default the new GeSHi header style GESHI_HEADER_PRE_VALID. We describe below different solutions to restore the old formatting:

• Define a custom style in MediaWiki:Common.css — This is probably the easiest & safest method, and also it allows to customize the output. For instance the following style adds a left border + background by default, unless if the <source> tag is enclosed in a <div class="noborder">

  /** GeSHi Syntax Highlight - custom styles */
  /** ... by default, we add a left border + left padding + left margin + lightgray background (for clarity) */
  div.mw-geshi
  {
  	margin: 0.5em 0em 0.5em 2em; 
  	padding: 0em 0em 0em 1em; 
  	border-left: 1px dashed #2f6fab;
  	background-color: #f9f9f9;
  }
   
  /** ... except if the <source> tag is enclosed in a <div class="noborder"> */
  div.noborder div.mw-geshi
  {
  	margin: 0px;
  	padding: 0px;
  	border-left: none;
  	background-color: inherit;
  }
  

• Patch GeSHi — The following patch restores the old pre format. It also introduces a new option prevalid to attribute enclose to force application of header style GESHI_HEADER_PRE_VALID.
  SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi_r24298.patch (<file name="SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi_r24298.patch" tag="source">download</file>)

  {{{content}}}

  SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi_r60735.patch (<file name="SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi_r60735.patch" tag="source">download</file>)

  {{{content}}}

• Add a custom .css to php - Another solution is discussed here. The proposed solution is to edit file "SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi.class.php". Go to line 192, which should look like

  $css[] = ".source-$lang {line-height: normal;}";
  

  Change this to

  $css[] = ".source-$lang {padding: 1em; border: 1px dashed #2f6fab; color: black; background-color: #f9f9f9; line-height: 1.1em;}";
  

  and you have restored the pre css formatting.

RawFile

RawFile is an extension made by Philippe Teuwen to allow downloading directly text in <pre> or <source> block as a file.

Patch v0.2 → v0.3

The patch below adds an optional parameter to hook {{#filelink}}. With 1 param, the file is fetched from the current page as usual:

Save [{{#filelink: fstab}} this file] in your <tt>/etc</tt> directory.

With 2 param, the 2nd param is telling which page to fetch the file from:

Save [{{#filelink: fstab|Config files - fstab}} this file] in your <tt>/etc</tt> directory.

RawFile-v0.2.patch (<file name="RawFile-v0.2.patch" tag="source">download</file>)

{{{content}}}

Patch v0.3 → v0.4

Changes in v0.4

• Anchors can be specified using html class attribute
• New syntax for Links and Anchor-links:

<file [name="..."] [anchor="..."] [tag="..."] [title="..."] >Link text</file>

• Support multiple files on the same page with same name.
• Can specify the tag name of the block to download (to skip some irrelevant blocks when using an anchor-link).
• Ignore <br> tag.
• Some error reporting.

The extension introduces 3 elements:

Anchor

Used to flag that the next code block in the wiki text belongs to a specific file. The code block can be any wiki block (such as <pre>, <code>, <tt>, <source>...). <br> tags are ignored. Note that anchors are invisible in the wiki display.

Link

They are transformed by the extension into links that allows for downloading all blocks attached to a given anchor name.

Anchor-link

A shortcut notation mixing both an anchor and download link, handy for regular use, when a single code block is used and when the download link can be at the same position as the anchor.

The syntax is as follows. The syntax using tag <file> and tag attribute class is new since v0.4. Note that elements of both syntaxes can be mixed in a same page.

Element	Syntax and description
Anchor	{{#fileAnchor: anchorname}} <pre class='anchorname'>...</pre> <code class="anchorname">...</code> <code class="cssclass anchorname">...</code> ... Indicates that the next wiki block is attached to an anchor anchorname. The content of that block will be downloaded (possibly appended with other blocks if there are several blocks attached to the same anchorname) when a file link is clicked on. (since v0.4) To attach an anchor anchorname to a wiki block, simply add an attribute class="anchorname" to it. The extension supports multi-class specification, meaning that a same block can be associated to different files, and that the class attribute can still be used to specify custom CSS properties as in standard wiki text. anchorname class="anchorname" The name of the anchor to which the wiki block is attached
Link	[{{#fileLink: anchorname}} link text] [{{#fileLink: anchorname|pagetitle}} link text] <file anchor="anchorname" [name="filename"] [title="pagetitle"]>link text</file> Creates a link to download all blocks that are attached to an anchor anchorname. anchorname anchor="anchorname" The name of the anchor to look for. All blocks attached to an anchor anchorname will be downloaded. name="filename" Optional - Specifies the name of the file to download. If absent, anchorname is then used as the name of the downloaded file. pagetitle tag="pagetitle" Optional - Indicates that the blocks to download are on the wiki page titled pagetitle. If absent, blocks are looked for on the current page. link text The text of the link to display.
Anchor-link	[{{#file: filename}} link text] <file name="filename" [tag="''tagname''"]>link text</file> Creates a link to download the next wiki block as a file named filename. (since v0.4) The attribute tag can be used to specify the tagname of the block to download. filename name="filename" The name of the file to download. tag="tagname" Optional - When set, the extension only looks for blocks whose name matches the given tagname. This attribute is particularly useful when there are some irrelevant blocks between the anchor-link and the block you want to download. If absent, the first encountered block following the anchor is downloaded. link text The text of the link to display.

Examples

* '''Method 1''': Returns the block that immediately follows. Save [{{#file: method1.txt}} this file]: <code>Hello, World!</code>
: But this other example fails because of the <br> tag... So save [{{#file: method1-fail.txt}} this file]:<br>
:<code>Hello, World!</code>.

* '''Method 2''': Indicates the block(s) with anchors. Save [{{#filelink: method2.txt}} this file] (but not this <code>code text</code>):<br>
:{{#fileanchor: method2.txt}}<code>We can then </code> very easily {{#fileanchor: method2.txt}}<code>interleave downloadable text with wiki comments</code>

* '''Method 3''': Same as above, but using html attribute 'class'. Save [{{#filelink: method3.txt}} this file] (but not this <code>code text</code>):<br>
:{{#fileanchor: method3.txt}}<code>We can still </code> very easily <code class="method3.txt">interleave downloadable text with wiki comments but with less typing</code>
<code class="method3.txt">
Obviously, there is absolutely
no limitation
on the size of the 
text
</code>

* '''Method 4''': Same as method 1, but using new syntax (custom wiki tag). Save <file name="method4.txt">'''this''' file</file>: <code>Hello, World!</code>

* '''Method 5''': Same as above, but specifying which tag to include. Save ''<file name="method5.txt" tag="code">this file</file>'':
<source lang="text">This text is skipped.</source>
:<code>This is the text that will be returned...</code>

* '''Method 6''': Same as method 2 / 3, but using new syntax (custom wiki tag). Save <file anchor="method6.txt">this file</file>. Of course the old syntax <code>{{#fileanchor}}</code> for anchor is still supported.<br>
:{{#fileanchor: method6.txt}}<code>Again, we can </code>also very easily <code class="method6.txt">interleave downloadable code with wiki text while using the new syntax</code>

This gives:

• Method 1: Returns the block that immediately follows. Save [{{#file: method1.txt}} this file]: Hello, World!

But this other example fails because of the <br> tag... So save [{{#file: method1-fail.txt}} this file]:

Hello, World!.

• Method 2: Indicates the block(s) with anchors. Save [{{#filelink: method2.txt}} this file] (but not this code text):
  

{{#fileanchor: method2.txt}}We can then very easily {{#fileanchor: method2.txt}}interleave downloadable text with wiki comments

• Method 3: Same as above, but using html attribute 'class'. Save [{{#filelink: method3.txt}} this file] (but not this code text):
  

{{#fileanchor: method3.txt}}We can still very easily interleave downloadable text with wiki comments but with less typing

s Obviously, there is absolutely no limitation on the size of the text

• Method 4: Same as method 1, but using new syntax (custom wiki tag). Save <file name="method4.txt">this file</file>: Hello, World!

• Method 5: Same as above, but specifying which tag to include. Save <file name="method5.txt" tag="code">this file</file>:

This text is skipped.

This is the text that will be returned...

• Method 6: Same as method 2 / 3, but using new syntax (custom wiki tag). Save <file anchor="method6.txt">this file</file>. Of course the old syntax {{#fileanchor}} for anchor is still supported.
  

{{#fileanchor: method6.txt}}Again, we can also very easily interleave downloadable code with wiki text while using the new syntax

References:

• Tag extensions on mediawiki.org

The code

RawFile.php (<file name="RawFile.php" tag="source">download</file>)

{{{content}}}